Safeguarding at Ashley Down Primary School

Ashley Down Primary School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children by providing a safe environment in which children and young people can learn, by acting on concerns about a child's welfare immediately and by fulfilling our legal responsibility to identify children who may need early help or who are suffering, or are likely to suffer, significant harm.

Safeguarding covers a variety of different elements of school life. Attendance, behaviour, online safety, and family support all come under the safeguarding umbrella alongside child protection.

In schools our safeguarding work is guided by a document called 'Keeping Children Safe in Education'. A link to this document can be found at the bottom of the page.

KCSIE (2034) defines Safeguarding as:

• providing help and support to meet the needs of children as soon as problems emerge

• protecting children from maltreatment, whether that is within or outside the home, including online

• preventing the impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development

• ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care

• taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes

Safeguarding is everyone's responsibility. We have a safeguarding team in school who co-ordinate our safeguarding work. This includes:

We have systems in place for members of our staff team to share concerns regarding children’s welfare, child sexual exploitation, PREVENT/radicalisation, and FGM with our DSLs, with parents and with relevant external agencies. Part of our legal duty to safeguard our children may also include us needing to consult specifically with and take advice from, the Police or Children's Social Care, should the need arise. For more information, please read our Safeguarding and Child Protection policy and our Online safety policy found on our policies page.

If you have concerns about a child, please come and speak to us.

Alternatively, you can call First Response

https://www.bristol.gov.uk/social-care-health/reporting-concerns-about-a-child-first-response

If you are visiting our school please read our Safeguarding Visitor Information.

Keeping Children Safe in Education 20024 can be found by following this link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66d7301b9084b18b95709f75/Keeping_children_safe_in_education_2024.pdf

Please see our Safeguarding Policy here.

Online safety

Online Safety is an important part of keeping children safe. Any online Safety incidents in school are recorded and managed in accordance with our Online Safety Policy. Online Safety is taught in all year groups using the principles in the government 'Education in a connected world' document and using resources from Common Sense Education. This supports learners in thinking critically, participating responsibly and taking ownership of their digital lives. More information about the Common Sense Education scheme of work can be found here.

https://www.commonsense.org/education/collections/digital-citizenship-for-early-years-and-primary-learners-uk

We can only be successful in keeping children safe online if we work with parents to ensure the Online Safety message is consistent. It is important that parents speak to their children about how they can keep safe and behave appropriately online.

We hope that the following parent guides from National Online Safety are useful in supporting you to keep your children safe online when at home. Please let us know if there is an area of online safety you would like support and advice in, and we will source the information for you.